Preface to the First Edition

The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance
both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war
has immensely accelerated and intensified the process of
transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly
capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the working people by
the state, which is merging more and more with the all-powerful
capitalist associations, is becoming increasingly monstrous.
The advanced countries - we mean their hinterland - are becoming
military convict prisons for the workers.

The unprecedented horrors and miseries of the protracted war are
making the people's position unbearable and increasing their
anger. The world proletarian revolution is clearly maturing.
The question of its relation to the state is acquiring practical
importance.

The elements of opportunism that accumulated over the decades of
comparatively peaceful development have given rise to the trend
of social-chauvinism which dominated the official socialist
parties throughout the world. This trend - socialism in words
and chauvinism in deeds (Plekhanov, Potresov, Breshkovskaya,
Rubanovich, and, in a slightly veiled form, Tsereteli, Chernov
and Co. in Russia; Scheidemann. Legien, David and others in
Germany; Renaudel, Guesde and Vandervelde in France and Belgium;
Hyndman and the
Fabians[1]
in England, etc., etc.) - is conspicuous
for the base, servile adaptation of the "leaders of socialism"
to the interests not only of "their" national bourgeoisie, but
of "their" state, for the majority of the so-called Great Powers
have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small
and weak nations. And the imperialist war is a war for the
division and redivision of this kind of booty. The struggle to
free the working people from the influence of the bourgeoisie in
general, and of the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular, is
impossible without a struggle against opportunist prejudices
concerning the "state".

First of all we examine the theory of Marx and Engels of the
state, and dwell in particular detail on those aspects of this
theory which are ignored or have been distorted by the
opportunists. Then we deal specially with the one who is
chiefly responsible for these distortions, Karl Kautsky, the
best-known leader of the Second International (1889-1914), which
has met with such miserable bankruptcy in the present war.
Lastly, we sum up the main results of the experience of the
Russian revolutions of 1905 and particularly of 1917.
Apparently, the latter is now (early August 1917) completing the
first stage of its development; but this revolution as a whole
can only be understood as a link in a chain of socialist
proletarian revolutions being caused by the imperialist war.
The question of the relation of the socialist proletarian
revolution to the state, therefore, is acquiring not only
practical political importance, but also the significance of a
most urgent problem of the day, the problem of explaining to the
masses what they will have to do before long to free themselves
from capitalist tyranny.

The Author

August 1917

Preface to the Second Edition

The present, second edition is published virtually unaltered, except
that section 3 had been added to Chapter II.

The Author

Moscow
December 17, 1918

Endnotes

[1]
Fabians--members of the Fabian Society, a British reformist organisation
founded in 1884. It grouped mostly bourgeois intellectuals--scholars,
writers, politicians--including Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Ramsay MacDonald
and Bernard Shaw. The Fabians denied the necessity for the proletarian class
struggle and for the socialist revolution. They contended that the
transition from capitalism to socialism could only be effected through minor
social reforms, that is, gradual changes. Lenin described Fabian ideas as
"an extremely opportunist trend" (see present edition, Vol. 13, p. 358).

In 1900 the Fabian Society became part of the British Labour Party. "Fabian
socialism" is a source of the Labour Party's ideology.

During the First World War the Fabians took a social-chauvinist stand. For
Lenin's characterisation of Fabian principles, see Lenin's article "British
Pacifism and the British Dislike of Theory" (present edition, Vol. 21, pp.
260-65).